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Talk:Darius/@comment-26034614-20150901201313/@comment-7765731-20150902162051
(Note, there's a bold TL;DR around the middle, and a section about "dealing" with him when he's ahead in lane last) @Herzog de Puce: The main reason he's getting buffs are two-fold; 1) The power-shift towards Noxian Might. Since his rework, Darius needs to stack up five stacks through any means necessary to be able to teamfight or even fight in lane (there are a few exceptions, but in general this is true). If he's denied his Noxian Might, he's generally just a more easily kited version of his pre-rework self. Basically, his strengths when he is at top are greater than before, but his most outstanding weaknesses are even more prominent than before. Remember, both his ultimate and his W deal quite a lot less damage at pretty much any state of the game if he doesn't have Noxian Might, and his Q might deal more damage but it also has a wind-up. 2) His new Q switching up entirely how both his lane matchups and teamfights work. This is both a buff and a nerf depending on the situation. When he's actually hitting with the blade, it's generally better than before. However, this also touches upon what I mentioned earlier about his strengths and weaknesses standing out more. Before, he could live with just hitting enemies with the handle - he still did reasonable damage and got a stack of his passive. There's also the fact that his Q being instant before allowed him to make more "fast" plays (such as Q->Ult on low targets), and the fact that he wasn't losing stacking time that he loses with the new windup (which is further gated by his current lower attack speed). About the lane matchups, his new Q switches things up. A lot. As an example one of his most popular lane matchups - Riven - used to be what I never considered an actual counter, but was atleast generally a simple way for most players to avoid getting cheesed by Riven's earlygame. In his current state, any Riven worth their salt will wreck Darius at all stages of the game. Again, this is mostly due to the Q not being instant anymore, which allows Riven to just jump into his face and start wrecking it whenever he uses it - Darius should not stand a chance of winning a fight vs a Riven against whom he only managed to hit with the handle of his axe. The new Q is lovely in fights vs tanks, bruisers and in disadvantageous fights where you can actually keep people chasing you without dying (I've turned around quite a number of fights because I was allowed to heal back up the damage they did to me while running) - but on the other hand your Q is more reliant on hitting the blade and isn't instant. It's good since it both allows counterplay and allows Riot to make his Q stronger, but it is often worse for him because of how important it is for Darius to hit it. TL;DR - Darius is stronger than before whenever he has his Noxian Might up (and is actually in range of someone to make use of it), but is both weaker and more kite-able when he doesn't. Basically, blame riot for making max-stacking his passive more important than ever while making it harder to do so (except when you have Noxian Might up, obviously, but you need to get there). I suspect that'd be the most sensible way they can handle this too - if they either allowed his kit to stack up slightly faster or decreased the amounts of stacks he needs, they could afford to tone down Noxian Might a bit. TL;DR As my last note, anyone having problems facing Darius need to remember that while he is more of a untouchable juggernaut against you if he's ahead of you in lane, he's also generally unable to kill you unless you overextend. To clarify on that, while he does have a slow on his E and W, that's all he has to keep you in range. If you have a dash (or similar), you should never be in danger of dying from 100-0, unless you are ridiculously behind. This was perfectly possible before, as all he often had to do was flash->grab->Q+W you to make sure that you needed both flash AND a dash to have a chance of escaping, since you would be slowed and he would have a MS bonus. Now he'd likely need to catch you with a Q before being able to do anything, since there's not really any way he's going to get enough stacks on you in time before you've escaped to a safe distance. So, while he may very well be able to deny you if you get ahead, he should never be able to kill you unless you mess up. His kit (generally) doesn't allow it without outplaying people anymore.